That first clicker is designed to take more than one shot, which threw me off of the mechanic. That's the arbitrary stuff that really got to me while playing it.

Clickers always take 2 bow shots. Anything else other than bloaters though does die if the shot is a sneak attack.The most powerful aspect of the bow is that it's the only ranged weapon that doesn't make much noise.

I feel that one of the upgrade for the 9mm pistol should have been a 2 point Noise Reduction.The 9mm is the weakest gun in the game and it would have made it viable later in the game to give it a [-35%] [-70%] noise upgrade.As it stands now, you never use it unless every other gun is out of ammo.

Played for about a half hour just to see if my opinion has changed on the game. Here's some of the shit I ran into:

-Runner model was showing up on my listen view but not in the actual game. Had me completely paranoid in a good way until I realized it was a glitch.-Did the brick throw smash on a dude and it alerted some other guys. Fine, no problem, except one guy was locked into an animation and stood completely still and would not break from it. He was just pointing a gun down a hallway. I thought maybe he was waiting for me, but no, he was just locked into his animation and didn't respond.-Started combat on a couple of other guys and a damn Molotov bastard spawned right behind me. I was more confused than anything else.

Again, I just find the game too glitchy and sporadic to really register as a GotY candidate for me. The experience is great, I liked the story (though outside of the ending I didn't really care about it that much), and the atmosphere is spectacular. The actual game, though, well it's kinda buggy and broken in places. I think it's meant to be, though. It's supposed to be tense, messy and ugly in places. I get all that, but maybe I just prefer my games to behave a certain way and follow certain routines. The random factor in Last of Us can lead to great story moments but also completely work against the other parts of the game. There's a real dissonance in the storytelling and actual way the game operates at times. For example, the game makes a huge deal out of survival and scavenging for supplies, but then you kill an enemy holding the exact same pistol as you and he was firing with unlimited ammo but you can't even get one bullet off of his corpse? Why not give each enemy a set amount of ammo and let the game go from there? How awesome would it have been to have an enemy run out of ammo and then rush you for a change? Probably too hard for the game's engine and development team, but these kinds of things really bugged me and ripped me out of the experience of playing this game.

I think it's odd that there are two groups of people with this game; those who love fighting the regular humans and hate the monster enemies, and vice-versa (though I'm sure Stephen will say he liked fighting both equally). I've heard people talk about broken AI and botched animation on both sides, so I think it really comes down to how you play. If you go pure stealth than the human enemies seem to respond the most logically and prove quite fun, while the infected tend to behave erratically and break immersion by seeing you through walls and shit. Meanwhile, straight up combat with the human enemies is kinda weird at times, with them being more than happy to sit behind cover and wait for you to flank them or losing sight of you when you run away. Infected enemies are fucking crazy to fight in straight up combat and get really scary in really panicked "Oh shit, oh shit" type way.

Some of these are pretty extreme, sure, but I saw a lot of the animation style glitches (enemies getting caught in animations or breaking away for a second and coming back).

Edit-

My criticisms may seem overly harsh, but let me be perfectly clear; we need more games like The Last of Us. We need more games that push for new things, ideas, ways to play, and levels of immersion. We need more games that treat the audience like they're adults. We need more games that leave you to figure things out and don't insist on stopping you every five minutes to explain a new mechanics. We need more games that push us forward instead of just releasing the same old shit year after year with a new paint job. The Last of Us is a very important game, and I think the high sales numbers will get more developers talking about new ideas.

Now, don't ever makes a sequel to this game, Naughty Dog. Let it rest. Let it stand for something new and important.

I didn't really have any bugs that I can recall either. Obviously with a game this elaborate, some people are gonna have them and some aren't, but my experience felt very solid, and watching my brother play through the entire game, his was as well. And even then, glitches never really bother me all that much, but that's just my personal experience.

Vis-a-vis shooting and enemies-- yes, I enjoyed fighting both immensely. Fighting humans involved totally different tactics than Infected, and I liked that.

And like I said, it comes down to story versus systems. Some sequences in the game "broke rules" in order to change up the experience. I know Rob didn't like those (an Infected spots you no matter what, you're hanging upside down with unlimited ammo, etc), but I thought they were excellent and kept you on your toes.

While I'm sorry others didn't have the same experience, this game is, again, easily one of my favorites I've ever played. If you didn't like the story until the end, that's totally cool, but I was 100% invested. The acting was outstanding, the voicing was perfect, and I was completely invested in all of the characters. Where ND really succeeded was including so many different ages and kinds of characters, which basically ensured that no matter who you are, you can relate to someone. As someone very close to my two brothers,

Code:

Sam and Henry's arc left me literally stunned. When I watched my brother play through the game this week, I could see that he was moved by it as well.

If you look at it as "THIS IS JUST A ZOMBIE STORY," sure, that kind of reductionism will make you value it less. But The Walking Dead is "JUST A ZOMBIE STORY," and everyone seems to adore that. Really it's about how well you get to know these characters, and in this regard, TLOU is an unmitigated success. I will remember the characters in the game forever, I enjoyed the gameplay, and I adored the fact that Naughty Dog didn't feel the need to spell out absolutely everything in the game. Naughty Dog made a world that I felt like I knew incredibly well despite only seeing certain sides of it.

So yeah, my GOTY all up in here. Totally cool if others don't feel that way, but I'll argue dissenters into oblivion :)

« Last Edit: July 25, 2013, 01:23:02 PM by Taelus »

Logged

"IT IS SUBTRACTION. I WILL COME TO YOUR SCHOOL AND BEAT YOUR STUDENTS." - John

I'm siding with those who say it's a great game, but certainly not devoid of problems. Can't rule it out for GOTY though since my experiences with what few games I've played this year haven't really matched up to the GOOD points of Last of Us. Some of the more bothersome things with the game, though:

- NPC's talking to Joel or each other from three rooms away while you're looking for supplies and collectibles, making it impossible to hear anything but Joel's responses and thus missing interesting dialogue.

- A couple of small glitches I experienced including once when the game refused to even start up and crashed my PS3, and another where three times the ending cutscene froze and crashed my PS3. Honestly, I feel like ND pushed the PS3 a little too far with this game. Fantastic fidelity, not so great stability.

- I've already mentioned the collectible problem, but not earning trophies doesn't really take anything away from the game, still there were a lot of moments where the game was trying to rush me past points where I felt like I should be looking around.

Again, very minor things but I noticed them enough to pull me out of what was otherwise a great game.

Anyone tested if you aim in the not covered area of the helmet?My aiming with a controller is complete shit and there's no way I could have tested if the shot works or if it always hits the helmet first.